


Reflecting, Refracting

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 2x12 The Alternate, Episode Tag, Introspection, M/M, Past Abuse, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28524270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: "Have you ever considered that maybe it’s not humanoid faces you have trouble with, it’s this face?” Quark says, waving the hand that’s not pouring the freshly mixed drink in Odo’s direction. Odo scoffs automatically. Then he thinks about it.
Relationships: Odo/Quark (Star Trek)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 83





	Reflecting, Refracting

**Author's Note:**

> _I’d live on the moon probably except I think I’d miss the moonlight._ —from "Anyway" by Richard Siken

“I was wondering how long it’d be before I saw you again,” Quark says in a tone that makes Odo scowl at him. The Ferengi raises his hands and widens his eyes in a pantomime of innocence, which Odo ignores as he seats himself at his usual Quark-investigating barstool.

“Oh, wondering, were you?” Odo starts in with a self-satisfied jut of his chin, squaring himself up as he stares across the bar at Quark. “Guilty conscience?”

“Now, what would be the point of that? I haven’t done anything to feel guilty about and I hardly need a conscience with you around.”

Odo snorts. “That almost seemed like it was meant to be a compliment of some sort.”

“Maybe it was,” Quark turns his back on Odo and reaches for a bottle on a high shelf, stretching up to grab it. “You don’t give me enough credit, you know.”

“I give you exactly the right amount of credit,” Odo feels himself relax into their usual arguing. Quark glares at him and sets the bottle (clear, very round, and full of some deep purple liquid) on the bar before ducking out of sight and clattering around.

“The ‘right amount’ to your mind being ‘none at all’?” Quark says from under the bar.

“Precisely.”

Quark grunts. “Come on, Odo, I have to surprise you every once in a while. You wouldn’t keep harassing me otherwise.”

“I’d hardly call keeping an eye on your criminal activities ‘harassing’.”

Quark points at him with one short, ringed finger. “See? _Criminal activities!_ You have no evidence of any criminal activities, you just stick your nose in my business because you feel like it.”

“Past behavior would seem to suggest that even if you’re not currently involved in anything nefarious, you will be by the end of the week,” Odo’s tone is perfectly serene, and Quark’s face splits into a wide grin at it.

“It’s good to have you back,” Quark says as he loads ice into a cocktail shaker. “Although I guess I can’t blame you for wanting to spend some time with your old man.”

Odo flinches, hunches up, and practically spits out, “I already told you, Dr. Mora is _not_ my father.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Quark waves his free hand. “He’s the one who found you and raised you, that makes him close enough to a father. You even look a little like him.”

“That,” Odo begins with the first genuine coldness he’s displayed towards Quark the whole conversation, “is because I learned how to mirror humanoids from observing him. He was the only practice subject I had at being a person.”

Odo flatters himself he can read Quark fairly well but the look the Ferengi gives him at that is impossible for him to decipher. It’s a long look, an interruption in the preparation of whatever drink Quark is making, and Odo silently urges him to stop and go back to it. Thankfully, he does.

“And anyway I never learned to do it very well, did I?” Odo’s voice is bitter now Quark’s focus has shifted back to the drink again, shaking the purple liquid and the ice and a splash of bitters in the shaker. “All these years of practicing and I’ve never managed to get humanoid faces quite right.”

“Do you even practice other faces?” Quark asks as he pulls down a glass.

Odo cocks his head. “I beg your pardon?”

“Have you ever considered that maybe it’s not humanoid faces you have trouble with, it’s this face?” Quark says, waving the hand that’s not pouring the freshly mixed drink in Odo’s direction. Odo scoffs automatically. Then he thinks about it. Then he pushes back his barstool and stands up.

“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand, Quark,” he says as he leaves the bar and tries to remember where he was in his rounds before dropping in on the Ferengi.

It’s a foolish comment, really. Of course Odo had tried other faces, once he’d been exposed to them. In the beginning it was just Dr. Mora and him, and then it was just gawkers, and they’d never gotten tired of prompting him to mirror them even long after it had become apparent he couldn’t quite pull it off. But after all that, after he’d left, after he’d come to the station… well, he hasn’t tried in a very long time. 

The mirror Odo keeps in the security office is tall and thin, like he is (like Dr. Mora is), and there have been times when he’s checked it almost obsessively to make sure he is as close an approximation of humanoid he can possibly be. Right after Dr. Mora left he’d been almost _— almost—_ afraid to look, afraid he might see whatever it is Dr. Mora and the others had seen when he’d run rampant through the station. He isn’t afraid now, not precisely, but he is wary as he scrutinizes himself, tries to think of somebody whose face he knows well enough to try and mimic.

After Dr. Mora, the people Odo has known the longest are the ones who were on the station during the Cardassian occupation, and the one he feels the least intimidated trying, in the relative private of his office, to look like, is Kira. 

He does the hair first, going from a dishwater blond to a red with little effort. He helps it along in shape with his hand, and it stands like Kira’s hair easily enough. Then comes the jawline, the earring covering his poor attempt at Bajoran ears, the cheeks. He manages to shrink his nose until it resembles Kira’s decidedly smaller and rounder one, changes the color of his eyes in their hollow sockets, and… that’s it. His features remain a blur, smooth lips and brow and forehead. It is as good as he can do and he turns away from the mirror with a snarl, changing his face back and feeling the hot sting of embarrassment deep inside himself. 

It’s been too many years, Odo thinks. He’s been practicing this face for too long to try another. This is simply part of what he looks like now, part of what he is. There isn’t anything else he wants to be strongly enough to overcome the shame of trying. 

But Quark’s words continue to tug at him, long after he’s gone through his next regeneration cycle and headed back out on the next day’s rounds. There’s a ring of truth to it, somehow. This face that is _his_ but that comes from someone else is something he holds onto, in all it’s imperfection and implication, like a son. Why hadn’t he shed this skin when he left Dr. Mora and his cage of a lab all those years ago? Why not try to become a Cardassian back in the days when Deep Space Nine was Terek Nor? Why not another Bajoran, somebody passing through? Why not a Ferengi? Certainly the face he knew the best, after Dr. Mora’s, was Quark’s. 

The last thing Odo does before his regeneration cycle is try to mimic Quark. It is oddly gratifying to see the large ears of his frustrating little nemesis form out of the sides of his face, the ridges, the wrinkles. The beady eyes and that deep maroon eyeshadow he wears. It is not perfect, the reflection of Quark that stares back at Odo, but then, he hadn’t been expecting anything going in, not after his attempt with Kira’s face, and he is pleasantly surprised. Odo turns his head, examining himself, and marvels. With practice, he could pass as Quark. Oh, probably not to somebody who knows him well, but to any of the delinquents Quark did business with, maybe. It is an interesting idea, and, Odo thinks with some satisfaction as he retires for the night, one which bears further thought. It might be useful to his work, after all.

The next day Odo pops into the bar to follow up on a shipment of low-quality diridium the Ferengi had been intending to resell, and he finds himself comparing Quark’s face to his memory of it, to the reflection he’d been able to create of it. When Odo next tries, he finds himself closer than before. And the next night closer than that. Until one night it is as close to perfect as he thinks he could get, and Odo pokes and prods at himself for half an hour before regenerating. When he reforms in the morning he frowns at himself. Why is he doing this? Because Quark said something insensitive about Dr. Mora being his father? Quark is always saying insensitive things. To prove to himself… what? That he can reflect someone else, someone who isn’t associated with the years of isolation and dehumanization he suffered before coming to the station?

 _Listen to yourself,_ Odo thinks as he flings himself down at his desk and begins scrolling through his padd for the day’s duties. _You can’t be dehumanized, you’re not humanoid._

It isn’t that he wants to be humanoid, necessarily, he thinks as he goes about his day. There are as many good things about being a shapeshifter as there are bad ones, and he supposes that is true for humanoids as well. And he doesn’t want to be Quark, not by a long shot. He finds Quark infuriating, contemptible, even rather pitiful at times. He can’t work out _what_ he feels when he is reflecting Quark, or thinking about reflecting Quark, or any of it, and it’s _irritating_. No, it’s something more than that.

It takes another week of reflecting Quark for a few minutes each night for Odo to recognize the feeling as loneliness. 

Quark usually closes the bar around 0200, and sure enough, Odo finds him in the back when he heads across the promenade. 

“Oh, hey, Odo,” Quark says with good cheer, glancing up from where he is counting his strips of latinum. “What’s up? Aren’t you usually goo in a bucket at this time of night?” 

“Yes,” Odo nods, “but, I… well, I wanted to show you something.” 

“What is it?” Quark doesn’t look up from his counting. 

Odo hesitates. He wants to ask Quark not to say anything hurtful but he isn’t sure what that would encompass so he merely clears his throat until Quark looks up at him. 

“ _What?_ ” Quark repeats, and Odo, steeling himself against the prophets only know what, starts to mirror him. He can feel the surface of his face rippling, changing, shifting. He makes himself a head shorter for good measure. When he finishes, Quark’s mouth is slightly open. 

“That’s quite a party trick,” Quark says in a tone Odo has come to recognize means he feels entirely wrong-footed and is attempting to course-correct. 

“It’s not a party trick,” Odo says sharply, and Quark nods. 

“No, I guess not. I guess I was right then, huh?” Quark says, striding around the table and coming close enough to peer at Odo. “You _can_ do other faces better than that scientist’s.” 

“I suppose you were, to an extent,” Odo concedes. “Although I don’t know what to make of the fact that the only one I seem to be able to do is yours.” 

Quark reaches out a hand, more delicately than Odo would have believed him capable of, and it hovers for a moment, not quite making contact with Odo’s face. “Yeah, that’s...” 

Odo nods, looking away. He reverts to his usual shape and, to his shock, Quark’s hand settles against his cheek. Odo is too stunned to pull back, and for a moment they stand together, Quark touching him with that same unreadable expression. His hand is warm and Odo can feel the textural difference between his fingertips and the bands of the many rings he wears.

After a moment he pulls his hand back, and Odo misses the touch. “Why did you do this?” Quark asks, his eyes narrowing slightly, accusatory. 

“I suppose I was hoping you could tell me that,” Odo responds, his voice very quiet. Quark swallows visibly, which Odo files away into a slowly growing folder of data he cannot even begin to hope to make sense of until it is fuller.

“Sorry.” He shrugs. “No idea.” He sucks in his cheeks. “I kind of like your face, though, you know?” 

Odo tilts his head. “You know, I think I do, too.” 

“I’m glad we got that settled,” Quark says drily, grinning. Odo frowns back, which only makes Quark beam wider. “Hey, Odo?” 

“What?” Odo puts on his best long-suffering tone as he scowls down at the Ferengi. 

In response, Quark raises himself up to his full height, rocks forward on the balls of his feet, and kisses Odo, once, his sharp teeth dragging just the tiniest bit on Odo’s smooth lips. When he rocks backwards again Odo touches his fingers to the spot, more surprised at how unsurprised he is than anything else. 

“Sorry I said you look like that Bajoran scientist,” Quark says by way of explanation. 

Odo’s frown deepens but there is no malice in his voice when he says, “but I do.” 

“Nah,” Quark grins again as he turns back to his table and resumes counting his latinum. “he looks like you.” 


End file.
